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That’s a Wrap: Highlights of Our 2016

It goes without saying and you've heard it a million times already, but it bears repeating: 2016 was godawful. It's safe to say we all found ourselves in disbelief and disgust in about 1,000 different ways this year. To paint you a picture of us here at The Standard, in the beginning of the year, we were Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby, and at the end of the year we are his haggard character in The Revenant. We're in a bear carcass just trying to keep warm.

With the end of the year nigh, we decided to blast some holiday music for strength and find 16 highlights of The Standard's 2016. Looking back on everything good that happened in our world, we're slowly starting to crawl out of the bear carcass. Join us, won't you?

1: Alma Moved In with Us

A lot can happen in a year. Alma, the beloved and acclaimed LA restaurant helmed by Ari Taymor, popped up at The Standard, Hollywood for a three-month stint. The chemistry was very real, and the food was delicious, so we asked them to join our fam. Now you can find Alma at The Standard, Hollywood full-time, serving up food and drinks for the entire hotel. #Blessed.

Turns out, 10 years really flies by when you’re sunning, swimming, sipping, and spa-ing. Everyone’s favorite Miami hideaway celebrated its first decade with a thing called Camp Standard. Some of our favorite people descended on their home-away-from-home for a long weekend of all-things-Standard-Miami. Solange serenading us in the garden is not something we’ll soon forget.

This past winter, we went searching for cures, and found them in some unexpected places. While everyone knows The Standard Spa, Miami Beach has a cure for anything that ails, we discovered that New York and Los Angeles have their own cure-centric subcultures.

There’s just something about hotels that captures the imagination. This year, downtown legend, Glenn O’Brien, unpacked the deeper meaning of checking in for us, and the doyenne of modern sex, Karley Sciortino, dissected the inherent allure of hotel hanky panky.

This year forced us to confront some big existential questions, like: “Can martinis and micheladas co-exist?” The answer was a resounding “YES!" In July, The Standard and Liz Lambert’s brilliant, Texas-based Bunkhouse got into bed together. Now you always have a place to stay down Texas-way. To kick things off, Bunkhouse taught us a thing or two about how to get wet.

In a prescient act of political commentary, the Paris-based conceptual artist Iván Argote, installed his brilliantly bold flaccid obelisk “Strengthlessness” on The Plaza at The Standard, High Line. The piece was a perfect commentary on the surreal state-of-affairs that was this election. In another piece of political provocation, Zoe Leonard’s viral hit, “I want a president” landed on our struts.

10: Time Was No Object

In the era of everything on-demand, it seemed crazy not to let you check in and out whenever you felt like it. Now you can come and go as you please at all The Standard hotels. It’s called Standard Time, and you’re welcome.

What’s bright, fresh, delicious, and comes in cans? Our Standard beer, Standard Brauhaus. Did you like it? Well, you drank roughly 144,000 cans and counting, so we’ll take that as a yes.

15: We Hit the Rossellini Farm

Photos by Davide Luciano

When Isabella Rossellini invites you over for lunch, you go. We got to pal around the Blue Velvet legend’s Bellport family farm with Isabella, her foodie daughter Elettra, and her model son Roberto Jr. Check that off our bucket list.

A lot has changed since the heyday of the '80s ball scene. The LGBT community has made huge gains, and elements of gay culture have gone mainstream. We sat down with the legendary House of Xtravaganza—whose father, Jose, took voguing to the wider world as a dancer and choreographer for Madonna—to hear stories from the early days and why family still matters more than ever.